In a standard production line, for instance producing blister packs of pills, the packages are advanced as a strip from a down-drawing thermoforming machine in a straight line to a station where the packages are stamped out of the strip and transferred to a conveyor that in turn leads to a machine where the packages are boxed. Ideally the output device constituted by the conveyor operates at a higher speed than the input device delivering the strip of packages to the transfer station. Thus the transfer device must not only shift the packages physically from the input device to the output device, which can be offset from each other vertically and horizontally, but must also allow the travel speed of the packages to rise to the output-device speed so they can be handed off to it smoothly.
In the known transfer devices for such blister packs, the packs are punched out and drop down on an output conveyor. Thus for a brief time each package is wholly free, not held in place or position by anything. When the package drops basically straight down onto the rapidly moving output conveyor, it can easily be knocked out of alignment as it comes into contact with the output conveyor. The best way to avoid this is to slow travel speed, which action reduces the output of the production line.